August 22nd, 2023 – Forgiven for what?

[00:00:00] Intro: Welcome to the second reading podcast from the University of Texas at Austin. The Republicans were in the Democratic Party because there was only one party. So I tell people on a regular basis, there is still a land of opportunity in America. It’s called Texas. The problem is these departures from the Constitution, they have become the norm. At what point must a female senator Raise her hand or her voice to be recognized over the male colleagues in the room.

[00:00:34] Jim Henson: And welcome back to the Second Reading Podcast. I’m Jim Henson, director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin. Happy to be joined by Josh Blank, the research director for the Texas Politics Project. Um, how are we this morning,

[00:00:48] Josh Blank: Josh? Doing pretty well. It’s a little, little sticky today,

[00:00:51] Jim Henson: a little hot.

[00:00:52] Jim Henson: Well, I was just going to say, you seem relatively well appointed given, you know, so you

[00:00:58] Josh Blank: know what? You know, it’s funny, it’s like, you know, when we record these things in the summer, I like to embrace the summer. So I might be wearing shorts, there might be sandals, but then once the kids come back and they’re on campus and I, you know, I work here, I feel like, you know, I should, I should want some

[00:01:11] Jim Henson: pants.

[00:01:12] Jim Henson: Got to be presentable. So in other words, you’re saying your legs are a little clammy. My legs are covered. Covered and a little

[00:01:17] Josh Blank: clammy. My toes are in socks. Yeah, there’s all kinds of things. That’s, anyway, that’s not very interesting. This is not what you came for, for this podcast. My sartorial choices.

[00:01:25] Josh Blank: Well,

[00:01:26] Jim Henson: I, you know, I, who knows what people come to this podcast for. No, I think we have a pretty good fair question of what our, what our niche audiences. So, so we’re recording on Tuesday, August 22nd is Josh implied day after school starts at the University of Texas at Austin. And for some reason, the student listening, welcome back.

[00:01:44] Jim Henson: Um, and the trial of suspended attorney general, Ken Paxton is set to begin. Two weeks from today, countdown, it’s, it’s getting close on September 5th at the day after Labor Day, you know, and I’ve thought about this, another stray thought, you know, in a podcast intro of stray thoughts, you know, it’s going to really ruin a lot of people’s Labor Day.

[00:02:07] Jim Henson: Yeah, I suppose that’s not a lot, but you know, I, you know, I, I kind of doubt a lot of the senators are going to take one last Labor Day jaunt. Although you don’t think so. Um, Since we last podcasted about a week ago, we’ve had kind of an avalanche of new information, some of which was released actually the day we recorded last week, um, and a few notable developments in the filings for the trial.

[00:02:30] Jim Henson: So to kind of set what we want to talk about, and we’re going to wind up talking a bit about a post we did on the Texas Politics Project very recently that, um, will point people to. So what have we seen? In the case, the house managers, essentially the prosecution. In the impeachment trial, filed a bucket of pretty hard hitting responses to Paxton’s motions that had been filed by his, his defense team a couple of weeks ago, and we talked about the defense motions on the podcast a couple weeks ago when we were lucky enough to have Warren McGuire on the, on the podcast, and that was right after they had been made public, um, You know, and we’re going to get back to one aspect of the back and forth that we wrote the post about that was based on all that.

[00:03:21] Jim Henson: Um, but in the last week since we last recorded, the house managers dropped a pretty big bomb that was the focus of almost all of the attention in the case over the weekend. And that was… A tranche of some 4, 000 pages of evidentiary exhibits that have, for the most part, really driven coverage of the case, uh, certainly in the Texas press since they were released last Thursday night.

[00:03:45] Jim Henson: Um, you know, the highlights are all in the coverage, you know, for listeners here, you said, I, you know, it’s. It’s interesting to go and start kind of going through all those filings, though, you know, it’s a lot of documents. I mean, I was feeling, frankly, a little bitchy that I had to read, you know, 250 pages of briefs, you know, overnight last week when the house managers…

[00:04:09] Jim Henson: Release their responses. Then they I’m glad they waited a few days to release all of this, but, you know, some of the things that people will have seen in the news is for example, the, the Excel spreadsheet of the Uber rides that were, you know, with the data from those rides, times, places, um, you know, from the.

[00:04:30] Jim Henson: right because that’s the sort of crypto Uber account that the, the attorney general appears to have been sharing with Nate Paul, um, and lots of other, you know, lots of other things that, you know, there’s a good, there’s an interesting diagram that’s got a little less play, but I thought it was interesting.

[00:04:43] Jim Henson: There’s an interesting diagram of. All of Nate Paul’s LLCs that were used to kind of construct his business dealing and there are a lot of them. It looks like a, it looks like a UT org chart.

[00:04:57] Josh Blank: Right. I mean, you know, that’s the thing. I mean, the 4, 000 pages or so, you know, it’s interesting because there’s sort of these sort of…

[00:05:02] Josh Blank: There’s two things that kind of come out of it, right? One is sort of the thing that is really driving the coverage, which is like burner phones and yeah, secret, you know, lift, you know, six secret uber accounts and how many times packs and seems to allege to have visited his mistress, you know, throughout this and, and to some extent, I think, you know, to me, actually, a lot of this stuff is already really.

[00:05:20] Josh Blank: Been alleged. I mean, I don’t think there’s a lot of new information, but it does like detail in a lot of ways the links that they both went to to try to kind of cover their tracks a little bit more clearly in a number of different, in a number of different settings. And so there’s sort of that piece of it, which is, you know, a direct response to this idea.

[00:05:35] Josh Blank: Well, the house has no evidence. And it’s like, well, okay, hold on a second. You know, here’s all this stuff that we’ve been talking about. And we’ve said that it turns out. We weren’t lying, you know, in the committees, these, this is data that we have about this, and then there’s all the legal arguments also, which is about how this case should proceed on.

[00:05:49] Josh Blank: So we’re getting a lot less coverage because frankly, it’s just more complicated. I mean, in some ways. Um, so I mean, it’s true that, you know, you kind of go and look at this, this coverage and what really came out was like, you know, Burner phones and stuff like that. But I think, you know, for us in some ways, you know, the sort of intersection of the reception of sort of the, the facts of the case on the one hand, as they become more and more clear to people, you know, what did and did not occur.

[00:06:13] Josh Blank: But then the intersection with sort of these legal arguments all kind of falling under this political umbrella. Yeah. Makes for kind of what’s, I think what, you know, you and I are probably

[00:06:22] Jim Henson: most interested here. Well, yeah, I mean, there’s a, there are a lot of very interesting, you know, affidavits of accounts, of meetings, things that took place between various actors as part, you know, in various phases of this.

[00:06:33] Jim Henson: And it’s a, you know, it’s a, it’s a pretty deep, uh, uh, you know, it’s not just a rabbit hole, it’s a Warren , it’s a warren of, you know, of, I can’t remember what you call a, a group of rabbits. But it’s a, there’s a lot, there’s a lot of tunnels here that to be. Brewing into, um, so. There were also a lot of, um, developments, if you will, kind of away from the ball, as it were, away from, you know, the two, the back and forth between the litigants.

[00:07:01] Jim Henson: And we are going to get back to some of that. So, you know, some of those that were also interesting in terms of, again, as you say, the political context of the case and, you know, the drum we’ve been beating a little bit in here, I think. about the political nature of this process, and there was a, there was a line in one of the filings by the House managers in response to the defense manager that, you know, refer this to, you know, capital P political, right, in terms of the nature of this.

[00:07:30] Jim Henson: Now, that was a little bit of a play on the Federalist Papers, but, you know, be that as it may, I like the point. So, but some of these, uh, developments. So, um, late last week, Lieutenant Governor Patrick appointed Mark Brown, who had served as a, as a judge on the 14th Court of Appeals in the middle of the decade, had done a lot of legal work, um, you know, pretty much a known Republican, I think it’s fair to say more or less, um, had appointed Brown to serve as his legal counsel in the trial, and people remember that the rules allow the, the, or, you know, almost, you know, since he helped write the rules, invite the lieutenant governor to hire somebody to serve his legal counsel as he presides over the trial, and there’s some precedent for this in past impeachments.

[00:08:17] Jim Henson: So, this is a big story for a day or so. The next day… Uh, Judge Brown sent the Lieutenant Governor a letter, a letter declining to accept the invitation to serve this role. It’s been reported that Patrick Staff met with Brown, you know, presumably as part of a vetting process. I think it’s not too much of a reach to think that.

[00:08:37] Jim Henson: To discuss what, you know, I think a Tribune story, actually it was a Dallas Morning News story, I believe. Quoting the letter from Brown, to discuss any political activities and relationships to the participants in… You know, quote, unquote, in LeFare Paxton, um, Brown said he had no recollection of any matters, I think at that time, but apparently on Saturday, he quote, unquote, remembered that he and his wife had contributed 250 to the Eva Guzman campaign, Eva Guzman campaign in November 2021 during her unsuccessful primary challenge to then incumbent A.

[00:09:13] Jim Henson: G. Paxton. Critics were skeptical, um, Uh, you know, on both sides about what was going on here. But it appears that Lieutenant Governor Patrick is still searching for an advisor now. I mean, you know, I, you know, I was thinking, I wonder what Wallace Jefferson is up to, but my, my guess is Wallace Jefferson probably gave more than 250.

[00:09:35] Jim Henson: I don’t know. We need to do some due diligence. That’s disqualified. I mean, so we’ll have to look. So, so then also in another, you know, development kind of, you know, in the, the broader halo of this, of the trial. Um, Paxton’s main or at least most visible lawyer, uh, the sort of increasingly well known Tony Busby, announced that he’s going to run for a Houston City Council seat.

[00:09:58] Jim Henson: Now, Busby had previously ran for mayor against Sylvester Turner and lost. Um, and this of course has drawn all kinds of discussion about how Busby might…

[00:10:19] Jim Henson: I

[00:10:19] Josh Blank: think that’s like the the clear and obvious sort of question read, although there is part of me when reading that that was sort of thinking to myself about what kind of. You know, potential latitude he might give himself or claim as a candidate because, you know, in the context of the gag order going on in the trial right now, you know, yes, that exists.

[00:10:39] Josh Blank: But there’s also, I mean, a First Amendment protection, especially for political speech. So as an actual active candidate for office. And again, you know, look, I’m not trying to say I know what he must be thinking, because that’s, you know, Impossible for me to know, but it does. And I do think, you know, whatever he’s, as, as sincerely as he’s running for anything, he’s running for the seat.

[00:10:57] Josh Blank: Sure. But I do think it’s kind of interesting. He’s in this position where on the one hand, he’s dealing with one of the biggest sort of political dramas, you know, of the state in real time. And at the same time, he’s going to be running for office. We’re presumably like, he’s still not supposed to talk about any of what he’s doing over here where he’s actually going to be known.

[00:11:13] Josh Blank: So it’s kind of, it’s just an interesting sort of dynamic.

[00:11:16] Jim Henson: They’re very curious, very interesting for those, you know, I can’t remember what. I’m not sure what place it is, but he’s running for council seat kind of West University. Yeah. I think West University, I think. Um, and I’ll leave the details of that to the Houston people.

[00:11:30] Jim Henson: Um, so step back from all this. If you keep in score at home, Tony Busby will be defending Ken Paxton while running for a Houston city council seat. And while it’s been a story. Seems okay. Nobody’s saying, hey, you can’t do that, or you shouldn’t do that, or, uh, you know, I’m sure there’s some people saying he shouldn’t, but nobody in the process.

[00:11:53] Jim Henson: It doesn’t seem to be changing what’s happening. Right. So that’s okay. Busby Presiding Officer of the trial Dan Patrick’s campaign 125, 000 from a campaign loan. These things happen, you know, in the course of campaign. That’s okay. Uh, Senator Angela Paxton’s campaign owes the defendant’s campaign, that is, uh, uh, suspended Attorney General Paxton, who is her husband, 600, 000, also a campaign loan.

[00:12:27] Jim Henson: She doesn’t have a vote, but will still be counted as part of the jury in the denominator in the votes on motion, um, you acquittal.

[00:12:38] Jim Henson: That’s more or less okay, apparently. Now, they tweaked that a little bit and, you know, you know, word on the street is that that was, you know, a very contentious issue in the Senate caucus meeting prior to the adoption of the rules, but still more or less okay. Um, on the non financial side… Uh, the attorney general, you know, recruited a state senator, Brian Hughes, to request a legal opinion that helped avoid foreclosure on the, the properties owned by Paul that were up for, for auction and, you know, owned by Paul and for his businesses.

[00:13:14] Jim Henson: One of the impeachment charges and, and, and that was one of the things that was fleshed out in some of these counter filings and some of these documents that were dumped. And there was a little note in there that, you know, I noticed there was a line that said that Hughes. Did not know what this was pertaining to, that this was connected to Paul.

[00:13:35] Jim Henson: Uh, so Hughes remaining a juror though. Okay. I guess. Back in the financial lane to defend Texas Liberty PAC, which has been a leading defender of Paxton donated a m donated a million dollars to lieutenant governor Patrick’s campaign. And then loaned it another 2 million, and the timing of this 3 million, these 3 million in total transactions was in June after the House impeached Paxton.

[00:14:01] Jim Henson: That too seems to be okay. No recusals or, you know, some bad press about it, but nothing. And then Judge Mark Brown gave Eva Guzman 250 during the 2021 primary. That’s not okay. Now, you know, I’m going to be a little bit. Disingenuous. I wish I could clarify why this all makes sense in this moment. I’m not sure that I can other than a general general characterizations of the process.

[00:14:34] Jim Henson: So, you know, for now we’ll file this portion of the podcast under the keeping up with the trial, uh, you know, sort of put it in, in the keeping up with the trial column. And we’ll circle back maybe a little bit. Um, but you know, you and I’ve talked about this a lot and it’s a subject and it’s also a legal subject now, the filings that, you know, there’s, it’s important to keep in mind.

[00:15:00] Jim Henson: This is not your normal. I don’t even want to say normal. It’s not a legal trial per se. Yeah.

[00:15:06] Josh Blank: I mean, I think, I think, you know, the way you laid that out, it really, you know, for, for anyone who is sort of. Whether they’re part of the process or just watching the process, who wants to say, okay, what, you know, what ideal type is this, you know, like, what, what is this and how, I mean, I think what’s been going on a lot is this idea.

[00:15:21] Josh Blank: Well, this is a criminal proceeding and here’s the way that it’s deviated. This is mostly what’s coming out of, of, you know, from Paxton’s camp is saying this is a criminal proceeding and therefore it needs to meet all these thresholds and benchmarks. But I think what you just laid out is a really clear, um, Point here, which is, you know, this is not a normal trial, right?

[00:15:36] Josh Blank: All the participants, the defendant, the prosecution, the judge and the jury have connections to each other because they’re all responsible to the same people, both voters and donors and each other in a lot of cases, right? And so, you know, To complain or to pretend otherwise, or to ask for a process that should look certain.

[00:15:55] Josh Blank: It’s just, that doesn’t exist here. Right? Like all of those, all of those sort of baseline assumptions about how this process works. You know, a dispassionate judge who has no connection to the case, jurors who are a juror of your peers, which I, maybe these are jurors. Jurors of his peers, I suppose, but who have no prejudice.

[00:16:09] Jim Henson: That’s the thing. That’s actually closest. That’s the closest, but in a much narrower sense than we’re used

[00:16:13] Josh Blank: to it. But also, but also an unbiased jury of your peers. Right. Right. You know, I mean, this is just not something. That exists, but I think there’s another way to look at this too, which I think is important because there’s a lot of sort of, you know, I don’t know, rock throwing from the cheap seats or whatever, which is that to say, you know, there’s no simple rule or code of conduct that’s going to somehow.

[00:16:31] Josh Blank: Make this work in a way that’s going to look like a jury trial that doesn’t disqualify half or more of the participants or Just basically acquits Paxton and says hey, we can’t deal with this because we’re all so, you know entangled in it

[00:16:43] Jim Henson: Yeah, and you know, I mean, you know, I guess I want to you know, underline a couple points out of that one is You know as we’ve gotten closer to the trial You know, and we’ve got, and we’re going through the pre trial motions and all of this, it is becoming clear that that observation in, uh, in terms of the contention between the two sides, um, is taking on kind of a political or not political.

[00:17:15] Jim Henson: Well, I. It’s taking on a political, but it’s also taking on, you know, it’s mapping on to the adversarial roles of the two parties in an interesting way. And that if you do go through and you read all those motions, as you kind of referred to, Paxson’s defense is trying to mount, is trying to get for their client, the most robust protections that exist, given the Texas and federal constitutions in the criminal justice system and in the judicial process.

[00:17:45] Jim Henson: Understandable. A large part of the response to those motions by the house managers and their lawyers was to say, yeah, that’s not what this is right, which is kind of the point we’re making. We’ve been making all along. But, you know, I guess the point I’m making is we’ve been making that point for a while, but in a very different kind of context.

[00:18:06] Jim Henson: And I just do want to flag that when you make that point now, I think we’ve had the luxury a little bit of making it from, you know, you said the cheat seats, the cheap seats and I was going to be really beat us up about it, I’d say that, but, you know, from a different perspective, right? And now these arguments are really entering into the adversarial process in a way that, you know, I suppose I should have anticipated, but I hadn’t really thought through that this would be so front and center.

[00:18:32] Jim Henson: I mean, a couple of the, one of the filings in particular, you know, goes to the, well, I was on a panel with some academics for the, for a event a couple of months ago and, you know, I mean, I, we were joking about, you know, they take away our political scientist cards if we didn’t mention the Federalist Papers.

[00:18:50] Jim Henson: Well, you know, Federalist Papers loomed pretty large and, and, and the recourse to the understanding of the political nature of the process in the, in the Constitution and in the Federalist Papers looms very large in all this and was a big part of one of the plead, at least one of the pleadings.

[00:19:05] Josh Blank: Yeah. And I think the thing that I, you know, that I want to take away from this, I mean, you know, you and I, you know, what I think.

[00:19:09] Josh Blank: At least I pride myself on in a lot of ways in terms of, you know, what I can contribute here. And I think what we do a lot of contributing is sort of trying to provide context and sort out these sort of different signals that are flowing around and try to make sense of it. And, you know, I think to your point, you know, you kind of said before, you know, you’d like to clarify, but, you know, and it’s like.

[00:19:27] Josh Blank: This is not something where you can easily kind of line up the arguments on one side line up there and say, well, these guys are arguing this and these guys are arguing that and therefore this is where the it’s not like that. I mean, this is such a complicated space. And part of it is the quasi judicial quasi political nature of it means that, you know, you have, you know, in some sense, you know, one side making a set of arguments.

[00:19:48] Josh Blank: Yeah. Yeah. Under one set of circumstances, we’ll make it another set of arguments and another set of circumstances that in some way you kind of combine them together and say, well, those don’t go together. So, for example, the idea here is, you know, to your point, and I think, you know, look, this is I have, you know, there’s no judgment here.

[00:20:02] Josh Blank: I think this is what you imagine in a. In any sort of judicial process in the U. S. is a very, you know, well defended, well prosecuted adversarial system that, you know, Hackson’s lawyers should mount every possible argument that is available to them to help their client just as, you know, the House impeachment managers and their lawyers should, you know, basically try to get the best and most favorable, uh, set of circumstances for their case.

[00:20:25] Josh Blank: That’s just what is going on right now. It’s not usually it’s not. That’s what’s Common. Yeah, I think for outsiders to watch this, even in the judicial system, like under a regular set of, you know, under a regular regular

[00:20:35] Jim Henson: watcher of law and order, the classic, the

[00:20:38] Josh Blank: classic law and order. Yeah, maybe the last.

[00:20:39] Josh Blank: But even though I don’t think the classic law of order, law and order is like, okay, pre trial motion phase, you know, um, And so, you know, on the one hand, you have this idea that, you know, they’re saying, well, this is a criminal trial. You know, this, this is what it should look like. He shouldn’t have to stand.

[00:20:52] Josh Blank: He shouldn’t have to be, uh, cross examine. There’s all these sort of pieces. And on the other hand, they’re also kind of making this argument. Paxson’s or is it like, you know, the voters already forgave him. Right. You know, there’s this other side of this, which is say, you know, as a political matter, this is settled, actually, and that’s actually another big part of this.

[00:21:09] Josh Blank: And so it’s kind of interesting in something. So and I’m not saying that as a as a ding against them, because what I’m actually said before that was like they should pursue every every avenue and argument. But if it doesn’t seem like there’s a lot of consistency within

[00:21:21] Jim Henson: it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, well, I think part of the issue here is that, you know, and I think, you know, you don’t have to beat this to death, but what serves their client, what serves their client best right now, if you’re Ken Paxton and his lawyers, is to strive for more legalism and to portray this as more of a legal process than, frankly, just to, you know, To be clear, then it is.

[00:21:48] Jim Henson: Yeah.

[00:21:48] Josh Blank: And I would say this too, is that, and you know, and that argument can actually serve both the legal and the political, right? So, so in this case, you know, a lot of the, you think about when Paxson wasn’t was impeached and you think about what a lot of his defenders were saying, which there weren’t a ton.

[00:22:02] Josh Blank: But among the defenders, what they would say is they were pointing to the process. In most cases, they were not defending his conduct. They were not saying, you know, the allegations against him were untrue or unfounded. They were saying the process that led to this was not, was suspect. And so in some ways, you know, part of this is to say, look, you know, we want to give our client every protection we possibly can, as if he was a criminal defendant in a, in a normal trial.

[00:22:24] Josh Blank: But also by, by laying out the idea that somehow this. This trial is not meeting this, you know, sort of somewhat arbitrary, you know, set of standards that they’ve set up furthers the political arguments that, you know, he’s being railroaded, that the house is, you know, run by a bunch of Democrats as part of this, you know, kind of, which I think one of the more crazy arguments out there.

[00:22:44] Josh Blank: Democrats and rhinos. Democrats and rhinos, right? Uh, And that therefore, you know, ultimately, but that that pressure, I mean, I think the goal in some ways is for that pressure to get back around to the jurors so that they hear from their voters. Well, this process is

[00:22:56] Jim Henson: messed up. Well, yeah. And that raises the point that we’ve talked about a bit, you know, that, you know, these pages and pages and pages of briefs are also in motions are also serving, you know, serving the purpose of.

[00:23:13] Jim Henson: Doing what they’re prohibit, you know, both sides are prohibited from doing by the gag

[00:23:17] Josh Blank: order. Yeah, and Tony Busby has been really the best about this partially. I mean, there’s a lot of, there’s an asymmetry here, which I think is important. You know, there’s a lot of people spending money sort of on Paxton’s behalf or on, you know, in his public defense, you know, in terms of regular players in Texas politics.

[00:23:30] Josh Blank: There’s not like a big. Tranch of money floating around of, you know, the people who want to prosecute Paxton making the counterargument. So you’ve got sort of a combination of that, you know, some, you know, Paxton lawyers can’t just go out and make, you know, broad based claims about, you know, how nefarious the house is, but they can put in a filing and then read it.

[00:23:46] Josh Blank: Sure. And so we’re going to see a lot of that. Right.

[00:23:49] Jim Henson: And, and know that there are, you know, Parallel organizations doing that for them anyway, right, to be fair. So you gave us a good hook for a transition and then we went on anyway, but, you know, so, you know, in a post this week, we used one of the arguments between…

[00:24:05] Jim Henson: Hook’s still there,

[00:24:05] Josh Blank: which is, this is still a public strategy, hidden in all this legalism.

[00:24:09] Jim Henson: You know, in a post this week, we used one of the arguments between the host manager, the house managers in Paxton, um, In the motions filed before the impeachment court as appointed departure. An invitation maybe is a little more accurate to, to round up results from, you know, wait for it, our polling on the attorney general and his legal, ethical, and political troubles.

[00:24:30] Jim Henson: Um, now threaded Sue several through several of the filings was the attempt by the Paxton defense to invoke. Fairly obscure and overlapping Texas legal doctrines known as the Prior Term and the Forgiveness Doctrine. Um, now we do a lot of explaining in the piece, but the short version is that the defense, or shortish, is that the Defense moved to dismiss most of the charges against Paxton by claiming that there was legal precedence for concluding that the effort to remove Paxton from office violated the sanctity of elections because the voters had already forgiven him by re electing him.

[00:25:15] Josh Blank: Right. And so, this sort of raises this broader issue of, you know, I mean, I’ll just put this. This is this implies something, right? I mean, ultimately, when you say this, this implies that voters had, in fact, uh, you know, learned about Paxton’s legal problems. What? You know, the some of the vast scope of them all who knows, right?

[00:25:34] Josh Blank: I mean, it’s kind of unclear had, uh, You know, basically adjudicated them in their own minds, you know, one way or another with whatever information they had and nonetheless, you know, or even because of their adjudication, decided that they should reelect him, right?

[00:25:50] Jim Henson: Okay, hence the term forgiveness, right? In other words, that this forgiveness doctrine and, you know, as we’re saying, you know, this is Um, you know, there’s a lot of legal underbrush one could unpack here.

[00:26:00] Jim Henson: We get at some of it in the piece and there’s a lot about this in both motions, particularly in the, in the house manager’s response. So I would point you to that. And when we post this on our website, we’ll post links to some of these documents, um, you know, in addition to the, to the, to the blog post because, you know, the house managers, as you might imagine, found many.

[00:26:23] Jim Henson: Many legal reasons why the whole notion, these, these notions of forgiveness or prior term were either irrelevant or non applicable to Paxton’s case. And all that stuff will be in the blog site. You know, For the umpteenth time, we’re not lawyers, but, you know, look, we have read a lot of logical arguments, and to me, the arguments seem pretty strong, you know, for no other reason, you know, as you were pointing out earlier that, you know, taken to its logical conclusion in a lot of different ways, these doctrines Would lead to kind of, you know, absurd or even silly outcomes, right?

[00:27:04] Jim Henson: Yeah, I mean,

[00:27:04] Josh Blank: you could imagine, you know, if I’m if I’m someone who’s looking like he’s cruising to re election, let’s say, in the week before, you know, my re election or my first election, I mean, is that basically just like purge day? Is it like, am I just, am I just allowed to do, do whatever, you know, because ultimately I’m going to be reelected and assuming it happened before, you know, my election, I’m, I’m okay.

[00:27:25] Josh Blank: None of these are, are, you know, a problem. I should take all the

[00:27:28] Jim Henson: bribes. I’m just curious. I’m not calling you on this. I’m just curious. And I will fess up too. How many of the Purge movies have you seen? Zero. Okay. I saw the, I saw the first one. It’s a good use of it. So, you know, you, you soaked it up, right?

[00:27:41] Jim Henson: As you were mentioning, I’m like, wow, is Josh actually watched those? No, absolutely not. That’s something that I imagine you watching. No,

[00:27:46] Josh Blank: you should, if nobody, there’s nothing to update here, not for me, but, but I mean, but here’s the thing, you know, you may say, well, that’s absurd, but, but, you know, courts actually.

[00:27:54] Josh Blank: Look at this. They look at the on the face of an argument, you know, if it leads to an absurd outcome, that’s actually something that, you know, judges often consider. And that’s why I think, you know, if you go back and look at the post that we did and you did a really job sort of digging up where the sort of prior term forgiveness of doctrines have come up.

[00:28:09] Josh Blank: And if anything, you know, the, um, The sort of, you know, relevant examples of it really don’t point to it being applied very broadly or at all. No,

[00:28:17] Jim Henson: that’s right. I mean, yeah. And so, and again, you know, you guys can look that up and, you know, the lawyers in the audience. But it

[00:28:22] Josh Blank: raises an important point for at least for where we, where we sit, which is that obviously, you know, there’s an intersection between this argument and public opinion, right?

[00:28:29] Josh Blank: Because the underlying logic of this prior term and forgiveness argument. hinges on this premise of an informed electorate, right? Or at least an electorate, you know, sufficiently informed in terms of both whatever the breadth and depth necessary is to make like a substantive judgment about this candidate in the case of Paxson in light of the alleged transgressions, right?

[00:28:47] Josh Blank: So let’s, you know, we can just say, Hey, does, does this depiction accurately describe the Texas

[00:28:52] Jim Henson: electorate? And in one of those moments that are good, I, you know, I like to think of as, you know, a podcast moment rather than a written moment. You know, we started thinking about this and, you know, in a very, in a very narrow sense, right?

[00:29:03] Jim Henson: I mean, we saw they were making that argument. He’s like, Oh, well, even before they made these arguments, like, Oh, you know, we’ve been pulling on this. We’ve got data about what the public knows. And then all of a sudden it became, you know, almost. You know, just positive or, you know, relevant to the arguments being made.

[00:29:18] Jim Henson: Right. So

[00:29:18] Josh Blank: we’ve asked, uh, four times going back to 2016 and as recently as June of this year, how much voters had heard in the news about the legal problems of Attorney General Kemp Pax. And that’s it. We’re not even saying, we’re not looking for specifics. We’re not even, we’re not even asking people, you know, about, you know, did you know about, have you heard of Nate Paul?

[00:29:35] Josh Blank: Have you heard about his security fraud charges? Have you heard? No, we’re just saying. Have you been like, have you heard about this in the news, right? Is this something that is, you know, ringing a bell for you? If you’re the guy’s problem. And often, you know, we, we ask this usually in the context of a bunch of other things too, just to kind of see, you know, just in terms of things that are going on to see what people are paying attention to and what they’re not.

[00:29:52] Josh Blank: And that’s sort of the question here is, are people paying attention to this? So prior to June, 2023, because June, 2023 comes after he was impeached, right? Um, no more than 20% of Texas voters. So one in five. Said that they had heard a lot about Paxson’s legal issues. After impeachment, it only went up to 31 percent.

[00:30:09] Josh Blank: So first and foremost, there’s no sense in the data that the public has really heard a lot about this, right? Because I know like some people might say, especially if you’re listening to this podcast, you’re gonna say, but this has been going on forever. Surely, and it’s like, this is where we let you know.

[00:30:23] Josh Blank: Most voters are generally pretty uninformed. Sorry, it’s just a fact. We ask what we have to do. There’s a lot of ways we can go into this. We don’t need to go into the details of this right now. We can do it on a different podcast. But generally speaking, you know, most voters knowledge of things is pretty surface level and does not include a lot of breath.

[00:30:39] Josh Blank: Right? And this is just one of those things that really, you know, has not penetrated the public, at least according to the data. So nearly half of voters in each poll prior, in each survey prior to his impeachment, said that they had not, that they had heard either not very much or nothing at all. So we can say, you know, again, and again, the specific numbers don’t really matter here, actually.

[00:30:58] Josh Blank: I mean, the main point is about half of the electorate has consistently said they don’t know anything about this. They’ve heard anything about it. It’s not aware. So I mean, just just on its face, this idea of an informed electorate on this issue that’s that’s rendered judgment and forgiveness seems a little bit of a stretch and

[00:31:13] Jim Henson: in the way that people can, you know, say, Well, you know, maybe you’re, you know, you’re, you know, you’re, you’re saying this is half empty rather than half full.

[00:31:22] Jim Henson: I mean, you know, Over time, I mean, more people did, you know, fewer people said that they had not heard a lot, but it was still a lot of people, right? I mean, in other words, if you go all the way back to October, 2016, um, more than half, 55% said that they had heard not very much or nothing at all. Now that does go down, but six years later.

[00:31:44] Jim Henson: Yeah. , right? It’s 42%. So only 40? Yeah. Well, even to April. Yeah. Oh yeah. To 44 and then 42%, and you know, in, in October of 2022. So, Yes, for the skeptics, people, it was soaking in some to more people, but

[00:32:02] Josh Blank: not very much. And I think October 22 is an important point here. That was the eve of the election. We think of that as our pre election poll.

[00:32:07] Josh Blank: So the idea again that, well, when voters were re electing Ken Paxton. They knew about this. Well, I got to be honest. The data says no, that is definitely I just I there’s nothing here that supports that. The other problem and there’s a there’s more in the data that actually sort of counters this idea of an informed electorate electorate that had rendered, you know, basically a positive judgment on Paxson despite this.

[00:32:29] Josh Blank: So it also appears looking at the data that the more informed a voter was about Paxson’s legal problems, all else equal, the more likely they are to say that the House was justified in impeaching Ken Paxson. So when we look at the June 2023, Paul’s after impeachment. So we asked both how much they had heard about his legal problems.

[00:32:44] Josh Blank: And then later in the survey, we ask, do you think the house was justified in impeaching? And even though

[00:32:47] Jim Henson: this is obvious, you know, it’s worth, I think, after the impeachment. And after the election,

[00:32:53] Josh Blank: right? Right. So we’re exactly. So again, still low levels of knowledge. But when we look at this, we find among people who said they have heard not very much about Paxton’s legal problems.

[00:33:02] Josh Blank: 29% thought the House was justified in impeaching him. 10% thought they weren’t. 61% didn’t have an opinion. Great. They shouldn’t, right? They don’t know about it. Again, to the point here, that’s actually a big number, although among those who said that they heard some about it, the sheriff saying that the house was justified impeaching and went from 29% to 52%.

[00:33:21] Josh Blank: Among those who said they heard a lot, the sheriff saying the impeachment was justified, jumped to 74%. So again, you know, a little bit of a problem here to say that, well, you know, Clearly voters know about this and they’ve forgiven him well actually voters don’t know about it when voters do know they actually thought the house was justified in impeaching him now let’s be fair right we could say hey look this is just Democrats right this must just be Democrats who’s this and this would be partially true.

[00:33:46] Josh Blank: In the sense that Democrats have been paying more attention to to the Ken Paxton’s legal problems and have Republicans threat. Now, take a step further in that argument, though, given the Democrats are not voting for Ken Paxton and the ideas that voters forgave Ken Paxton and then reelect him to office.

[00:34:00] Josh Blank: Well, look, Ken Paxton’s reelection to office relied predominantly on the votes of Republican voters. I don’t think that’s a controversial statement, and Republican voters were paying the least attention to this. Okay. At the same time, though, even among Paxson’s core supporters, these Republicans, the poll found GOP voters were split on Paxson’s impeachment.

[00:34:18] Josh Blank: So overall, 31% thought the House was justified, 30% thought it wasn’t justified, and this split held regardless of knowledge. So it wasn’t as though the more informed Republican voters said, no, the impeachment wasn’t justified. Among those who thought… who had heard some about Ken Paxton’s legal problems.

[00:34:33] Josh Blank: 34% thought the House was justified. 31% thought it was not justified. This is among Republicans. Among Republicans who say they had heard a lot, again, a minority of Republicans, about Ken Paxton’s impeachment, 42% said it was justified. 47% said it was not justified. So at best, the best interpretation you can have is among Paxton’s core supporters who returned him to office, most had not heard about his impeachment, or had not heard about his legal problems.

[00:34:56] Josh Blank: When asked about his impeachment, they were split on his justification. And as you and as they and even those who had heard a lot about it still split. So the underlying data here, there’s a couple takeaways, right? So the first takeaway is, you know, the data does not support this premise that the electorate was informed on reelecting Paxton.

[00:35:11] Josh Blank: I think that’s a full stop. And even now, most voters are just starting to pay attention. Second, you know, Republicans have not. express forgiveness in the here and now, and in fact, look to be split down the middle. And their response to to the House’s impeachment. And the third takeaway is when voters do Express awareness of Paxson’s alleged, transcriptions, they do appear less likely to be forgiving at this point.

[00:35:33] Jim Henson: So, you know, it casts some doubt in, you know, in two key dimensions on this notion of the forgiveness doctrine, right? Right? Because, you know, on one hand, You know, as we’ve said, People didn’t know that much, and so You know, you get into the, you know, uninformed forgiveness seems to be to be a kind of empty set con concept in a lot of ways.

[00:35:58] Jim Henson: And the more they know. The less likely they are to forgive, well, are it controlling for party?

[00:36:04] Josh Blank: Yeah. And it’s interesting too, because I think, you know, one of the things that struck me about when the house managers laid out, uh, the case for impeachment, especially in the committee more so than on the floor, but one of the issues that, that they raised.

[00:36:15] Josh Blank: You know, there that’s been less, I think, a part of the kind of the, the, the follow on arguments and the motions and all that is, you know, they pointed out the fact that, you know, and again, if you’ve been following this, you know, especially with respect to the securities fraud charges against PAX and these charges have been going on for, you know, almost a decade now or this case and, you know, that was, you know, By design in terms of the defense that that Paxson amounted then, you know, again, we’re not going to go into this Lauren would be a great person to bring back that maybe you guys talked about this But in terms of all the wrangling that went on about where the case should take place How who is getting paid what and how and all of this essentially delayed adjudication of this, right?

[00:36:51] Josh Blank: And you know in some ways what the house, you know What the house manager said when they were laying this out is look, you know To the extent that, like, this has not been adjudicated by a court of law, you know, the voters have not been given an opportunity to actually evaluate all of these, these issues.

[00:37:07] Josh Blank: And if that’s going to continue to go on, you know, this is where we kind of have to step in. Because ultimately, you know, if, and I mean, somebody, they were almost saying, look, had Paxton just gone to trial on securities fraud and whatever happened, they convict him, they let him off, and then the voters go and reelect him.

[00:37:22] Josh Blank: Okay, fine, hands up, you know, fair enough, right? But in this case, because, you know, essentially of the sort of the legal strategy, which is very common of just delaying these things out and drawing them out and trying to bleed out the other side for as long as you can. Actually, you know, this has not been adjudicated in public.

[00:37:37] Josh Blank: And one of the points I think is that, you know, we made in the piece, I think is important. And technically, you’re presumed innocent. I mean, Paxton in a court, in a real court of law, right?

[00:37:46] Jim Henson: Well, a court of law, which this is not,

[00:37:48] Josh Blank: but in an actual court of law where like these securities fraud charges are going out currently, Ken Paxson is presumed innocent, but absent, you know, sort of any actual case adjudication of it, a decision by a judge or jury or whoever is going to ultimately decide that what essentially, you know, Paxson’s offense is saying is, even though Nobody’s actually like adjudicated these issues in a, in a serious sort of legal way in an actual criminal court or a civil court or whatever we’re saying that the voters have in fact actually adjudicated all of this in their minds have come to a determination that Paxton is, is fine and have voted him, you know, into office and both on the face of, you know, what we know about what the public thinks, but also the actual process as it’s played out over the last decade, it’s kind of ridiculous.

[00:38:32] Jim Henson: I mean, well, I mean, you know, yeah, I mean, look, the house managers have pointed out what is seems pretty apparent on the face of it, that in the legal process, the idea, you know, the whole purpose was, or, you know, at least part of the, you know, you don’t even have to say purpose. One of the effects of the very.

[00:38:51] Jim Henson: Common strat, legal strategy of. Was to actually prevent the formation of an informed public. That was also part of the strategy of the house manager will argue. And does seem to be, you know, the point of, you know, much of the evidence that was, you know, dumped last week.

[00:39:16] Jim Henson: You know, a similar attempt in terms, you know, from the perspective of thinking about what the electorate knows was made to prevent public knowledge of several aspects of his relationship with napalm. And so. You know, let, let, let the adversarial process take place. But from the perspective of public opinion, it actually really cast a lot of doubt on the whole construct that there was an informed electorate that was capable of in, you know, any kind of.

[00:39:51] Jim Henson: You know, I mean, I’m going to call it informed forgiveness, but the whole concept of forgiveness, I think, maybe we’re even getting into the theological here, presupposes a certain level of knowledge of that which is being forgiven.

[00:40:06] Josh Blank: Right. Yeah. And I mean, and I think, you think about what to lay it out a little, you know, yeah.

[00:40:10] Josh Blank: And if you think about what really, you know, I think. Kick the house into gear on this in a lot of ways, you know, it was when Paxton came to the house and asked for about 3. 3 million to settle the whistleblower complaint. And ultimately, you know, what the house said was, well, can we you answer some questions about that?

[00:40:27] Josh Blank: And Paxton said, no. Well, you know, I think they were, you know, at that point, you know, you’re asking the house to basically write a blank check, almost not a blank check. It’s a 3. 3 million check to essentially make this problem go away for him. Yeah, and I think, you know, at some point that becomes a big ask.

[00:40:44] Josh Blank: And I mean, I’ve said this before, but also, you know, with the FBI undergoing, you know, an investigation, you already having indicted date. Paul, you know, seemingly looking into, you know, pretty seriously looking into what what packs and has been doing, you know, I think there’s probably a lot of it. Yeah.

[00:40:58] Josh Blank: Yeah. Reticence on the part of the house pretty clearly to be to be forgiving. But also, I mean, in some ways, you know, I mean, I say this is, you know, tongue in cheek, but it’s like you almost, you know, are you a co conspirator at that point? I mean, you’re not actually probably, but you know, you’re sitting here writing him a check to essentially for to forgive by you.

[00:41:16] Josh Blank: You mean, well, the text,

[00:41:18] Jim Henson: the members of the house is kind of view of themselves. And yeah.

[00:41:21] Josh Blank: Yeah. And then ultimately they’re sitting here essentially, you know. Aiding him in this process of not actually adjudicating these issues, right?

[00:41:28] Jim Henson: You know now which is you know, yeah sort of part of how we got here and there’s you know, there are a lot, you know thrust us back into the political, you know, the very political dimension of some of that decision making but um, you know, I You know and as we you know, one of the things that was almost an you know I’d like to say I thought of this ahead of time but one of the kind of unexpected takeaways or the kind of with this has moved my thinking about this a little bit is that You know, heartened is too strong a word, but when I saw what the patterns were in public opinion that as people became more informed, they were more skeptical.

[00:42:06] Jim Henson: You know, including Republicans, even if at a lower baseline, you know, I mean, we spend a lot of time in here talking about how partisanship, you know, the current configure of partisanship with ideological sorting and polarization, so strong and negative polarization, so strongly colors everybody’s fundamental interpretations of.

[00:42:28] Jim Henson: What they’re, the stimuli they’re getting from the world, you know, in this sense, you know, we’ll see how we feel when the process plays out, you know, I’m a little heartened that the public is, you know, has some healthy skepticism, even if we can see that partisanship plays a role, Democrats are more inclined to think that it was justified, Republicans are less inclined, but the information is thus far has shaped public opinions.

[00:42:59] Jim Henson: And I think, you know, Maybe a little bit of a plug here, but you know, we’ll obviously be doing more polling on this. Don’t want to say where, when to poison the well, but it will be interesting to see if this little ray of optimism or positive affect I have, you know, in this moment kind of carries forward.

[00:43:18] Jim Henson: It’s funny because I don’t, you know, and honestly, I

[00:43:20] Josh Blank: don’t know. Yeah. I’m pretty, uh, I’m. I hold a certain amount of skepticism here, you know, and I think part of it is something I mentioned before about the asymmetry and the information environment. I think, you know, the distance that we’ve had between the impeachment and what will eventually be the trial, you know, sort of the, the tactical and totally understandable aggressiveness on the part of Paxson’s defense to try to paint a picture of, uh, of, you know, essentially, you.

[00:43:49] Josh Blank: It’s funny enough, you know, like a more or less corrupt house in a, in an unfair process. You know, I mean, they are going directly to voters with that. I mean, they, that is something that they’re actively trying. This is a narrative that they’re actively trying to seed. And it’s gonna be interesting to see how effective that is, because I think, you know, one of the other things that this, you know, something that’s really important here, I guess, and this is, you know, let me take a step back, let’s put on that social science hat again for one second.

[00:44:11] Josh Blank: You know, this is where the, the lack of knowledge actually really plays to Paxson’s benefit

[00:44:18] Jim Henson: Yeah, because they have a degree of advantage in filling in

[00:44:20] Josh Blank: the gaps, right? So the idea is when we think to yourself, you know, okay, you know, let’s say you have an opinion on something. Well, first of all, you know, you have to have an opinion, right?

[00:44:27] Josh Blank: So let’s just start there. So you have an opinion one way or the other about this. And the idea is the strength of that opinion might be a function of a number of things. But, but one of those things might be like how much you know about it, like how many considerations you bring to bear on that opinion in this case, you know, Whether or not Paxton should be impeached, whether or not he should, you know, remain in office.

[00:44:43] Josh Blank: Right. But if you have nothing and let’s say someone comes along who you trust, you know, or, you know, you consistently hear, you know, the same message or you’re very persuasive message even right. Well, all of a sudden, you have to think about it. If you’ve got a vessel, it’s got nothing in and now that’s what gets put in there.

[00:45:01] Josh Blank: Well, there’s nothing to counteract that and that becomes, you know, essentially what you know, and I think in our, you know, sort of information environment in our media environment in the way that, uh, you know, people seek out information, you know, it wouldn’t surprise me if some of the most committed Republicans in the next poll.

[00:45:16] Josh Blank: Rally around Paxton, not even necessarily because I think, you know, there’s been because they’ve taken a fair minded adjudication of the facts, because honestly, that’s still is what we’re actually waiting to have happen right in the trial. But because you see if it will happen, but because You know, what they’ve heard is something that they got through, you know, a campaign appeal, some kind of email from, you know, some allied group, you know, maybe some coverage they picked up of, you know, Tony Busby on AM radio talking about, you know, the kangaroo court, like, you know, and that reading from his reading from his briefs, you know, and so I think, you know, we’re a little bit of a, uh, You know, an interesting kind of pregnant moment.

[00:45:56] Josh Blank: I mean, I don’t know. I don’t know what’s going to happen next in terms of the way the post. And the thing is, I think it matters, you know, I mean, because this is a political process, I think it matters pretty dramatically. I mean, the fact that, you know, after the House impeached the attorney general, we saw a split among Republicans.

[00:46:14] Josh Blank: That completely and perfectly encapsulated sort of the discomfort among, especially Senate Republicans in terms of how to, how to move on this. Right. I mean, the gag order in some ways, you know, look, on the one hand, we talked about this before, the gag order by the lieutenant governor, I think, was, you know, in some way, a way to try to ostensibly show a process that’s, you know, fair.

[00:46:35] Josh Blank: It also provides a lot of cover because, you know, most of the people in all the process don’t have to say anything about it right now. And I don’t think they want to because there’s no obvious sort of direction. There’s no, there’s no signal from their public Republican voters, Republican, right?

[00:46:47] Josh Blank: Especially, you know, committed Republicans as to where they’re coming on packs. And, but if we go and, you know, essentially. Pax and his allies have been successful in sort of messaging this and this becomes the first thing that a lot of Republicans hear because it will be the first thing a lot of Republicans hear about this.

[00:47:01] Josh Blank: You know, we come back and now it’s 70, 30, you know, don’t impeach, you know, they shouldn’t have impeached him. It’s 80, 20, you know, he should stay in office or whatever. You know, that’s the question of something along those lines. That’s going to put a lot of pressure on Senate Republicans. I

[00:47:14] Jim Henson: guess my point is I don’t, you know, and I don’t know, I don’t know either.

[00:47:17] Jim Henson: I don’t know what it’s going to look like. I mean, I don’t want to say, you know, I don’t want to overplay my optimism here. But, you know, I would not have been surprised in our June poll had we asked about this and Republicans had been, if we had already gotten those numbers that you were

[00:47:33] Josh Blank: just talking about.

[00:47:34] Josh Blank: No, totally. I mean, that’s the thing. So that’s, I mean, that’s kind of, you know, from our, you know, from our seats, that’s what I’m watching. You know, that’s what I want to see what happens. Because I think that is really going to. Color the calculations that the people in the process are making, you know, dramatically, and we’re really we’re up to the point at which, you know, that part of this game is

[00:47:50] Jim Henson: over.

[00:47:51] Jim Henson: Well, there’s a little bit of the, you know, I mean, you know, we need to wind up soon, but I mean, I think one of the things that we’re seeing is an interesting aspect of this is that. For all that we’ve talked in the last decade about the importance of factional conflict inside the Republican Party as a driver of politics in the state, you know, in the context of, you know, Democ, waning, put it mildly, Democratic influence in the public debate, this is a very big moment.

[00:48:25] Jim Henson: Thank you. for sorting out this dynamic you were referring to from a political science way of like, you know, the fact that, you know, Republican voters who are kind of in the driver’s seat in the political system, you know, they’re experienced getting somewhat mixed messages from elite Republican leaders.

[00:48:45] Jim Henson: But Most of those divisions have been most, have been operative in the most potent ways, more in, in relatively limited mobilized circles, like you talking about strong Republicans really was an interesting point as I thought about that. But, you know, this is going to be a very. Very high visibility fight, really most among Republicans.

[00:49:10] Jim Henson: Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, the idea is And how those signals sort themselves out is going to be very interesting, and whose signals, you know, wind up getting through more powerfully, you know, and interacting with pre exist predispositions about Public corruption.

[00:49:22] Josh Blank: And I mean, the thing is, is, you know, when we talk about, you know, Republican coalitional factional politics or whatever, usually we’re talking more about how high the volume’s got to be.

[00:49:30] Josh Blank: Right. Not different channels. Yeah. And this is just different. Right. So the idea here is, you know, again, normally, you know, to the extent that, you know, just we talk about all the time, but to the extent that sort of the far right. Most committed, you know, grassroots primary voters, however you want to describe them.

[00:49:43] Josh Blank: Republicans, you know, to the extent that mobilizing those people against more center right, you know, center right, you know, tendencies in the Republican coalition has been one about degree. Well, they didn’t do enough on abortion. They didn’t do enough to, you know, secure gun rights. They didn’t do enough to secure the border, but they were doing stuff all the time, right?

[00:50:00] Josh Blank: This is different because we’re talking about different directions. Right. And that is going to be interesting to watch them

[00:50:07] Jim Henson: navigate. Yeah, there’s not much in the way of middle ground here and, you know, although, you know, we’ll, you know, I think I’ve thought that before on these things, you know, I mean, to go back and, you know, this is where, you know, one of the gaps in terms of the elite signaling right now, it’s a very interesting absence in all this is the lack of signals from both the Lieutenant Governor and the Governor.

[00:50:30] Jim Henson: Yeah. And while I don’t expect either of them to start sending super clear signals, there is going to, you know, one of the biggest questions we’ve been saying all along is, you know, how is the Lieutenant governor going to handle this? What is his signaling going to be like? And I think we’ve got a lot of, you know.

[00:50:51] Jim Henson: It’s a whole other podcast to talk about what those signals look like. So those are one of the things that we’re going to be looking at. But I would close by just urging people to go and look at the data. This is, you know, we are, we’re saying this all the time. The data on this is very interesting and it will be a good baseline as we move forward and as we, as the trial begins, as we do more polling, um, and we see, you know, where public opinion is going to move on this.

[00:51:15] Jim Henson: So with that, thanks to Josh for being here. As always, thanks again to our excellent production team in the DEV studio here in the College of Liberal Arts at UT Austin. Busy time for them with being back to school, so thanks for your, as always, great production support. Thanks for listening. Um, you can find more of the state that we’re talking about at texaspolitics.

[00:51:37] Jim Henson: utexas. edu. Follow the blog link and you’ll find it. And we’ll be back soon with another Second Reading podcast.

[00:51:50] Jim Henson: The Second Reading podcast is a production of the Texas Politics Project. At the University of Texas at Austin.